bakerstreet | The Masquerade Meme

The Masquerade Meme

The { MASQUERADE } Meme

Masquerade
Paper faces on parade
Masquerade

It's a splendid night for a party!

You received an invitation to a masquerade party and after wondering who exactly throws these things anymore outside of people in Italy and the strange people in that Vanilla Sky movie, you've decided to attend! Decked out in your best (or maybe not so best - it may have been last minute, after all), you descend on the party and prepare to make it a night to remember.

Is it your friend's annual Halloween party with a twist? Perhaps you're an international spy, trying to find out the best way to steal the Crown Jewels. Maybe this is part of Spirit Week at your high school and you really wish that your classmates would be more creative next time.

Elaborate Venetian, playful animals, dazzling supernatural creatures - the night is young. Have fun.

:::

This is not a RNG meme. Your characters' role and situation is entirely up to you. "But how do you play?" you might ask. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3!

1.) Post with your character. In the subject line, type of your character's name and canon. If you'd like, in the comment section, you can describe what mask/costume your character is wearing.
2.) Tag around! This is a party after all, and your character can't find any of their usual crew behind their masks (or maybe they can and need to tease them mercilessly for their choice of costume).
3.) Profit!

First person to drop the chandelier buys drinks for everyone!

stolen from

dammithardison here

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He gave a slight, barely there nod each time, just to show that he'd gotten the message and was keeping the count. It was easy to just move with the crowd, keeping alert without looking alert was something he'd gotten good at, and it came in handy here even though being out in the open, being visible, wasn't his usual forte.

Tension was starting to ride across his shoulders the longer they went without an incident, he was never sure what to do when things actually went according to plan, especially when he was prepared for them not to. But even by the time they got to the emergency evacuation gathering point, and their final tally was up to forty four, everything was still on the level, no one had started shooting, nothing had visibly caught fire, nothing was dragging stragglers off into the early-morning fog. Nothing had happened and it made Clint more paranoid than ever.

Maybe neither of them had expected Clint to win, but it seemed there were a lot more irate people at this hotel than either of them had anticipated, and all it took was one person to say it and it set off a chain reaction until Natasha’s guess was more than doubled and Clint’s was still quite a bit off, but still closer. These people were no better than parrots.

Once the crowd had stopped moving and they were all milling about the marshaling area, she pressed herself close to Clint, giving the illusion that she was cold; one hand still held his while the other was in her pocket, fingers curled around her gun.

“Think we can slip away unnoticed?” she said in his ear, inconspicuously scanning those around them for any suspicious behaviour. Their ride should be waiting for them, they just had to get to it.

He was surprised by the win as well, surprised enough that he wasn't going to claim it yet, not until they were actually back at HQ and make sure they were both on the same page.

There was a small smile when she huddled close, arm curling loosely around her waist, under her same pretense of keeping warm, but still giving her the ability to move if she had to.

"Probably. You see our ride yet?" Because he hadn't spotted anyone waiting for them. He knew they'd have one, since they'd been assured of a pickup, but there weren't any obvious SHIELD vehicles in the lot, nor across the street, and there weren't any of the unmarked ones either, which was just something else to add to his growing paranoia.

Someone should have been waiting for them. Coulson had informed them of the time the evacuation was to take place, so why wasn’t someone there? Unless they were parked on a side street somewhere; the parking lot did look pretty full.

“You’re the one they call Hawkeye,” Natasha pointed out. If anyone could pick their ride out among all the vehicles here it was Clint. As it was, their current positioned allowed her to easily search behind him and to her right, which also gave him a good view of the other 180 degrees.

Turning her head to the side to rest against his chest, she noted a car pulling up across the street where it double parked. “Black sedan, your nine o’clock.” It was possibly one of theirs but she wasn't certain. "Do you think that's us?"

He shifted his weight a little, turning partway so he could see, and also so that he could lift a hand, running it through his hair and throwing off a hand-signal at the same time, nodding once when he got confirmation from the driver, "Yeah, that's us."

Really with the way the crowd was milling around it wouldn't be terribly difficult for them to break away, "Have to wait for them to tally everybody, make sure the staff knows that we got out of the building, then we can make our escape." Because really, triggering a search-and-rescue for two people who didn't actually exist was the kind of thing they usually tried to avoid.

Natasha was relieved when he confirmed that their ride was waiting, but she huffed out a sigh when he proceeded to tell her they had to wait before they slipped out. He was right, of course, they had to be there for the headcount, but she always hated the waiting part. As a marksman he may have had all the patience in the world, but Natasha certainly didn’t.

“They are certainly taking their sweet time,” she grumbled, turning her face to lean her forehead against Clint’s chest while she fingered the gun in her pocket. She kept an ear out for anything out of the ordinary, listening in on little snippets of conversation around her, but so far it was just the inane and annoyed conversation of the hotel guests.

"Might be easier if people would stop milling around like sheep and just sit still like they're told." which was funny, really, coming from a guy who only rarely did what he was told.

Though it wasn't long before a hotel official with a clipboard approached them, and Clint gave their alias as easily as anything, along with an equally easy 'thanks', when they got checked off on the list. That done, melting back into the still milling crowd and making it across the street was a cakewalk.

“Easier, but unlikely. In many ways the general population are little better than barnyard animals.” Or any animals, for that matter. She had certainly met enough men who were more animal than man.

Making sure to look as exhausted and disgruntled as possible when their names were taken, Natasha took one last look around before they slipped across the street to where their ride was waiting. It was all going smoothly, apparently far too smoothly, as just as they were loading the luggage into the trunk she felt a stinging pain in her arm and only barely kept herself from crying out. Sucking in a breath she immediately pushed Clint behind the car and crouched to the ground behind it herself, holding a hand tightly over the bullet wound. “I’m hit. I didn’t see anyone but they must be to the North,” she said hurriedly.

He knew that in-suck of breath meant something had happened, and he suspected injury but couldn't be sure thanks to just how quickly it had happened and how quickly she reacted, pulling him out of the way.

He just nodded once, thumping the car door and relaying this information to their driver by way of a string of hand signals in the side view mirror. They were out of the line of fire for now, but even Clint knew that wouldn't last, and he couldn't risk going back around to the trunk to get his bag. He could, however, get the back passenger door open, not at all surprised when the window took a bullet, high, just under the frame, "They can't see us, just the movement. We're still out of sight here."

While Clint relayed their information to the driver, Natasha struggled out of her coat. Tearing off the damaged sleeve, she tied it tightly around her injured arm before taking the guns from the coat pockets. She couldn’t tell how far away the shooter was so there was a chance the guns would be useless, but she wasn’t about to give them up just yet. They weren’t silenced, though, so the second she fired off a round any lingering hotel guests would panic. They had probably already garnered a bit of attention when the car window suddenly shattered.

“Can you see any of them?” she asked Clint. She didn’t know how many there were so it was always safe to assume more than one.

"Let me pop the other door and I'll tell you, sit tight." He hoisted himself up into the back of the car then, glad to note that their driver was already on the horn with HQ. He kept his head down below the line of the rear window, while still keeping the top few rows of building windows in view as he shoved the opposite door open from the inside. It was easier not to focus on any building in particular, pay attention to his peripheral vision.

That window shattered from the other side and Clint swore, unable to see where the shot had come from, since he'd been focusing on the same side it had come from before. He swore again, sliding back out of the car to the pavement at Natasha's side, "They've got us half surrounded, or at least shooters from either end of the street. Backup's being called in."

Natasha stayed crouched down where she was, seemingly under safe cover, while Clint wriggled through the back seat of the car to the other side. She barely flinched when the second window shattered too. When he returned to her side she looked at him expectantly.

“Great,” she replied, peering down the street as best she could without exposing any part of herself to the shooters. “At least it looks like they took the hotel guests back. Hopefully it’s too early for many other civilians to be around.”

He nodded, "I think that was our plan, make extracting us easy without too many eyes on the ground to see what was going on." Not that it would have looked like anything besides a young couple getting a ride from their hotel, probably to an airport, given the size and shape of the vehicle.

Clint drummed his fingers against the edge of the car's floor, "I'm going to try to get my bow, hate feeling naked out here." And it would be tricky, but not impossible to do, he just had to flip the back seat down without making himself a target, and pull the suitcase with his bow and quiver through to where they were.

"Let me know if you see anything." He said, hoisting himself back into the car, keeping to the floor even as he snaked an arm up to get at the latch that would pull the back of the seat forward.

Natasha nodded as Clint shimmied back into the car. His bow had a much longer range and was their best shot of getting out of this. They could try getting in the car and driving away, but if the driver sat up he would be a prime target, and since they didn’t know where the shooters were they couldn’t risk it.

Keeping her gun ready, she scanned the rooftops and windows of the nearby buildings until an out of place reflection caught her eye. The sunlight was glinting off something in an upper story window and it wasn’t the glass itself. “I spotted one,” she said, listening for Clint’s progress instead of looking. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the shooter.

Mostly Clint was hoping that whoever it was wouldn't have a clear shot at the driver once the seat was folded down, and it seemed that they were going to be lucky in that regard, at least, as there was no reaction even when he hauled the suitcase through the opening and down to the floor beside him, shouldering the seat back into place once he'd done so, "Sitting still or on the move?"

That would determine just how he went about this, already sliding back down to the asphalt beside her, knowing that he was going to have to risk becoming a target to take one down. Especially with backup still about twenty minutes off, according to the new signal from the driver.

“Stationary,” Natasha replied as Clint rejoined her beside the car. “Building at my ten o’clock, top leftmost window.”

The shooter was mostly concealed but every once in a while there was movement, enough to catch the eye. Clearly an amateur who hadn’t learned the value of patience and the ability to remain unflinchingly still. The problem was that there was still at least one more shooter not accounted for so they couldn’t put their full attention on just this one. “See him?” Natasha asked for confirmation. Once Clint had his eye on the first one she would continue the search for the next. It was likely he would take action the second Clint did.

"I've got him." Clint said with a nod, already pinpointing not only where he was, but which direction he was leaning, after all, despite the fact that these people had kill-on-sight orders, he was only planning on winging the sniper, not killing him unless absolutely necessary.

"The other one's probably almost directly opposite." He said, "At least judging by the angle the windows got shot out at." He had to make sure that the one at the front of the car wasn't going to shoot him if he moved to take down the one at the back of the car.

Natasha nodded at his assessment, now they just needed to decide the next step. They could probably wait it out until backup arrived but it would be risky, and hardly their style. She knew Clint could easily taken the men out from this distance, but the second he stood up to take a shot he was making himself a target for the second shooter. Of course, there was always a third option.

“I think it’s about time we test their skills by giving them a moving target to shoot at,” she said, turning a grin toward Clint. There was another parked car a few yards away. If she made a run for it she would draw their fire and give him the opportunity to take them down while their attention was elsewhere.

"You sure?" Though really the question was just a formality, she wouldn't have made the suggestion if she wasn't sure she could get to new cover without actually getting shot.

So he nodded, shifting his weight and snagging an arrow, just holding it loosely between his fingers, ready to draw and shoot at a moment's notice, and with a second arrow within easy reach, "Okay. Wait until the one we can see is looking away, that way you're more likely to draw the fire of the one we can't."

Which would keep whoever it was from actually shooting Clint while he took out the one at the rear of the car, "See if you can spot where the other one is and let me know."

“You have a better idea?” Natasha replied, quirking an eyebrow at him. She knew he wasn’t truly questioning her, just as she wasn’t really looking for another option. It was just their usual exchange of words while they prepared to jump into action.

Her eyesight wasn’t as keen as Clint’s but she did as asked. Taking into account the trajectory of the bullet that had shattered the window, Clint’s estimation of where he believed the shooter would be, and the first shooter’s line of sight if the two were to communicate, she quickly narrowed her search and focused on just a few key areas. she scanned all the windows, balconies, anywhere that could conceal a man but came up with nothing.

“I can’t spot him. I... wait,” she squinted into the early morning light. “There’s movement on the roof.”

He just nodded once, "We'll find out if that's right when he starts shooting." He rolled his shoulders, shifting his weight so that he could shoot up over the back of the car as soon as he was on his feet, "On my mark." Still keeping an eye on the fidgety one, waiting for the next turn away, "Go."

He waited until she'd actually moved before he surged to his feet, letting fly, knowing that the shot was true even before he dropped again to turn and retrieve the other arrow, hoping he had a clear shot at the other one, that the rooftop shooter's attention would be focused on Natasha and not on him.

In their line of work they couldn’t always run on certainties, so this ‘wait and find out’ problem was nothing new.

Clenching the fist on her injured arm and holding her gun in the other, Natasha positioned herself and prepared to run at Clint’s say so. She didn’t like taking her eyes off both the shooters but she had to focus on her new target, the other car that would provide her with cover, or at least that was what the shooters would hopefully believe. Ideally Clitn would incapacitate them both before she reached it.

At his signal she rant and though she couldn’t hear the silenced gunshots she was certain she could feel the bullet whiz by her. She didn’t pause, didn’t falter; she just kept running, trusting in Clint to have her back.

And have her back he did, his smile was grimly pleased upon finding out that she'd been right, that the man on the roof was their other shooter. Clint's second arrow was just as sure as the first one, both of them set to disable and not to kill, because until they knew for sure whether the gunmen were connected with their hit last night or not, they couldn't risk dead bodies.

Once both the gunmen were dropped, Clint ducked back down into the lee of the door, resting on one knee, quiver still on the backseat of the car where he could draw another arrow if he needed, turning to make sure Natasha was alright.

Natasha ran. She ran and she didn’t stop until she had leapt over the hood of the car an concealed herself behind it. For a brief moment she held her breath and listened before she let it out slowly, trying to regulate her racing heart. There was no sound of gunshots, no breaking glass, no pinging of bullets off metal; clearly Clint had lived up to his reputation as the best shot SHIELD had.

Peering over the hood of the car she caught his eye and nodded once. It seemed there had only been the two shooters but they couldn’t be too careful. Signing to him she asked about the status on their backup.

He glanced up to verify with the driver before signalling back that they were still about ten minutes out, but closing fast. He suspected that the location of their two dropped snipers had already been relayed as well, though they didn't have any sort of signal for that, so he couldn't ask. He just scanned both buildings again to see if anything else caught his eye.

He was relieved that she'd made it without further injury, though not surprised, if anyone could pull off a headlong rush like that it was Natasha.

The Masquerade Meme

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